Chapter 2
Graham lay in bed in the morning, listening to the calls of birds from outside. He knew they were supposed to be calming, soothing, but to him they were only screeches. He was praying that yesterday had been merely a dream.
It wouldn't be the first time. The first few weeks after, he'd slept well. He had surprised his colleagues in that. They were all plagued with guilty, restless nights and dreams that had them screaming, gradually turning them all into corpses as dead as those lying on cold slabs in the morgue. But, Will, he remained the same, his nights no more affected than before, his days still plagued with visions and hallucinations, but it wasn't of the Ripper. Or Abigail. But he wasn't coping; he just hadn't taken anything in. Not truly. Abigail wasn't dead, despite being one of the three mourners at her funeral. Hannibal wasn't the Ripper, despite all the headlines he had to walk past every day, all accompanied by some blurry photo of Lecter from a crime scene. And Hannibal was coming back. He hadn't left Will. He wouldn't.
Lecter's house was big, and all the forensics had been fully focused on the bodies, both the ones found on the streets and the ones in the fridge. They took their time. Meticulous in how they rummaged through the doctor's belongings, his life, and uncovered more and more that Will, who thought he'd known Hannibal, could never have dreamt of. It took them a few weeks, therefore, to find Lecter's notes on Will, to find the evidence he'd planted against him to have him arrested in his place. Then, he felt Jack turn on him. It was then that he truly realised who, what, Hannibal was.
And then the nightmares started.
A scratching from the main room disturbed his thoughts, for which he was grateful. He went to shout into the dogs, let them know he was awake for them, when he stopped himself. If yesterday was real, if it had truly happened, of which the more he thought about the less real it seemed, then Lecter would hear him also. For some reason, that disgusted him.
He sat up, and swung his feet out to place them on the cold floor. His head was pounding slightly, and he was beginning to regret the last couple of whiskies the night before. With a deep breath, whether to stable himself or prepare himself, he padded into the main room.
It hadn't been a nightmare; Lecter's eyes met his gaze along with the eyes of his strays, of which Will supposed was a positive. At least he was mentally sane. That caused a bitter smile to spread across his dry lips. He ignored the man whose eyes continued to follow him as he let the dogs out the front door, though part of him wanted to crouch beside him and touch him, just gently, just to check he was real. Check all of this was real. Yesterday was a blur, as surreal to Will as some hallucinogenic vision, but today was like waking up on a cold street walk. He was aiding a fugitive. No, that was too distant, too clinical. He was helping Hannibal Lecter. The Chesapeake Ripper. Abigail's killer. Cannibal.
Hannibal's eyes never left Will, though they narrowed as Will remained stood still beside the front door, his hand still on the knob as though he'd frozen. 'Will? Are you well?' He was met with a cool stare, as though his voice turned the agent's stomach. Which was probably true. 'You didn't sleep last night, Will.'
'Do I look that bad?' He instantly regretted the words. They were too personal, too open.
'No,' Hannibal answered quickly, his voice low and soft. 'But, I could hear your breathing. You lay awake, staring at the ceiling and praying that I was merely a shadow you thought you'd seen out of the corner of your eye. We are the same in that respect.'
'We are not the same in any respect.' Will was beside the sink by this point, splashing his face with the icy water in a bid to wake himself truly. He wasn't alert enough for conversation with Lecter yet. 'You lay awake also then?'
'This may surprise you, Will, but sleeping is made a great deal harder when you're lying barely clothed on the floor, attached to a table by handcuffs.'
It was enough to get a weak grin out of Graham as he began making some supermarket brand of instant coffee, though Hannibal knew he couldn't smile back in return. Will couldn't feel they were too similar. Not yet.
There was a certain reluctance about Graham as he unlocked the handcuffs with the key he'd placed inside a kitchen drawer. Maybe it was due to how close Will had to get to him, so close it felt like their breath was mingling once more, their hands were mere inches apart just as they used to be. Or maybe it was due to how close Will had to be to Lecter's mouth, to his teeth, and that he couldn't free his mind from the memories of those organs wrapped in freezer bags dotting the kitchen shelves. Could Will imagine Lecter clamping his jaw around him? His teeth sinking into the agent's skin, blood dropping down Graham's body, down Lecter's chin, a wide bloody smile as Will howled in agony. No doubt it had crossed his mind. It had never crossed Hannibal's.
The handcuffs clicked, unlocked, and Will backed away quickly, going to sit at the table on which sat the two mugs of coffee he had been preparing. Once Will was seated, Hannibal rose from the floor and joined him at the table. His whole body was stiff, the pain seeming to seep from one muscle to the next, yet he ignored it. He could stretch when not in company.
'Do you still have nightmares, Will?' He meant it to sound friendly, caring, but he was afraid he just sounded clinical. Will's face let him know that he did.
'You aren't my psychiatrist anymore, Lecter. And I'm not the same person I was all those months ago,' he answered with gritted teeth, and took a sip of the coffee as if to steady himself.
'Of course, you aren't. You seem better now, more aware. You have your empathy more under control, I believe. You meet my eyes more often.'
'No thanks to you.' Will looked up from the table briefly. 'And you're wrong. I just know from experience that I can't get in your head. I thought I could, once, but I was wrong. So I can meet your eyes. It's the only way I know you're really human, and not a figment of my nightmares. My nightmares couldn't create eyes that dark.'
'Even so, the FBI won't allow you to work with them any longer.'
Will paused. Hannibal was trying to rile him, get him angry, make him vulnerable. He wasn't willing to let this happen. 'After the Ripper case, after they nearly arrested me, thinking I was involved, we all decided it was best if I didn't return to the FBI. They paid me well, and as it's only me and the strays, I haven't needed to return to work at all yet.'
'You keep yourself open in the hope the phone will ring and it will be Jack Crawford on the line. You try not to leave the house because, however subconsciously, you want to see Alana Bloom driving up to see you. You keep the radio turned off to avoid any form of news report that details a new killer that you have not been consulted on. You don't like to admit any of this, Will, because ultimately it requires hoping for the murder of innocent people, but sometimes you feel it would be a worthwhile sacrifice if it redeemed you to Jack.'
'I don't need to redeem myself to Jack Crawford.'
'Maybe not, but you feel you need to talk to him. And Dr Bloom. You all went through similar experiences six months ago, you need to share.' His voice was soft, soothing, enough to distract Will as the doctor placed his hand over Graham's, which lay on the table still beside the half-consumed coffee. At the contact, Will instantly flinched and pulled his hand from underneath, yet stayed seated. Progress.
'I don't think I'm the main concern here anyway, Lecter. I'm not the one who's been missing for six months and suddenly shown up at the house of the man I tried to frame for murder. So please, explain.' He could ask this today. He needed to.
'Do you truly wish to know?' He took a small sip of the lukewarm liquid before him as Will continued to stare. 'Very well. I knew the FBI was on my tail. I don't know how, or how much they truly knew, so I left quickly but did not travel far. I sought assistance at the residence of my psychiatrist, Dr Bedelia Du Maurier.'
'Dr Du Maurier?' Flashbacks of a blonde corpse, black bruising around her neck, lying cold on a mortuary slab in Baltimore. 'Du Maurier's dead. Suicide. She hung herself.'
'You're wrong...'
'No, we found her body. Jack thought the Ripper might have gone to someone he knew. Sought sanctuary. But we only found her. She must have found out, felt guilty...'
'No, Will, you're wrong.'
'Du Maurier is dead.'
'I am not denying her death. Merely her suicide.'
It took Graham a second or so before he truly understood. 'You killed her? She was a Ripper victim?'
'I sought her help in the first few days after the FBI began tracking me. She had no idea what I was supposed to have done, and she owed me a debt. On the third day, however, there was an article in The Tattler. Freddie Lounds. And she learnt all. I had no choice. I never wanted to hurt her; she was a colleague and a friend...'
'So you hung her from the staircase? Just as I was a patient, and a colleague and a...' The word 'lover' caught on his tongue. 'A friend. And a friend. Yet you still set me up as the copycat killer. And now I'm helping you, just as Du Maurier was, will you hang me too? When I become useless, will it be my body that Jack finds next, my organs removed and my body mutilated?'
'You asked me why I am here. I'm merely informing you. After Dr Du Maurier, I tried staying in small motels and shelters, which became increasingly difficult as I found my own face on the front of newspapers. It was an unsettling experience.'
'You killed again.'
It was something about the look in Will's eyes, sadness maybe, emptiness, or maybe acceptance, which pained Lecter to nod his head slowly. 'Yes. A detective, in a car park. He thought he could single-handedly turn the Ripper in. He was obnoxious, arrogant.'
'He was English. You almost caused an international incident.'
'I took his wallet, and his keys. His coat was new, so I took that also. I stayed in his hotel room for a night or so. Then you found his body.'
'Not me personally. Jack Crawford had me by that point, though I hear I missed a treat.' He was attempting sarcasm, yet Will succeeded in merely sounding tired, despite the early time of day. 'Do you feel anything, Lecter? Remorse? Guilt? I always told Jack the Ripper felt nothing for his victims, looked at them like pigs...but they were all random. Do you feel anything...did you feel anything for Du Maurier? For Abigail? Why are you even here?'
'I do feel guilt, Will, for Dr Du Maurier. She was a colleague, and a friend, and she was willing to help me when I required. Her death was a shame. I feel guilt for Abigail especially.' He paused, his tongue wetting his lips slowly as he thought. He needed the right words, the right tone, the right way to say this. He needed Will to understand. 'I loved Abigail, Will. When I told you we were to be her fathers, that I felt a paternal responsibility for her, that wasn't a lie. I wanted to look after her, to care for her, to watch her bloom between us. We could have been a family, Will, Abigail, yourself and I. Her death was a tragic accident...
'You slit her throat.'
'Not because I planned to. Not because I wanted to. Because I was forced to. A tragic accident on all of our behalves.'
Will couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. He wanted to be hearing wrong, as though the words were hitting his ear, but they were becoming twisted and distorted into something completely different to that being originally spoken. 'You tell me all of this, every single word designed to open the old wounds you inflicted, but you sit there like before. Like you always did. Why are you here, Lecter? Why are you back? What do you honestly think I can provide you?'
'I was never going to leave you, Will. That was never part of my design.' The doctor expected Will to flinch at his own speech reused, yet he seemed to soften instead, his eyes slightly warmer. 'I thought we could be a family. But, I had to test you, for you to prove that you were capable. Both you and Abigail. Unfortunately, for you, this meant almost destroying you in the process. But, that's why I tried to frame you, Will. You'd have been safe in prison, kept away from Jack Crawford, who broke you slowly, crime scene after crime scene, yet could never understand the after-effects. I understood. And I'm sorry. But it was necessary.'
'Why are you here...?' His voice was a mere whisper, afraid to raise it any louder of fear of breaking the honesty that Lecter had somehow woven into the very air around them, like a delicate web.
'I never left you, not really. I kept away for as long as I believed the FBI would have you under surveillance, as well as following the news as best I could. Then, it was just ensuring I would be here while you were out, if only to avoid startling you too suddenly. I made a copy of your house keys months ago...'
'You made a copy of my keys? I gave you a key, what the hell did you need a copy for?'
'I left the original key somewhere you would find at my home when you searched it. I needed you to believe I wouldn't use it, so you wouldn't think to change the locks.'
It had worked, Will couldn't help but think bitterly. Jack had told him, urged him to move house after Lecter's disappearance. If he comes for anyone, it'll be you, Will. But Will didn't. He couldn't even bring himself to have the locks changed, unwilling to change any aspect of his life because of Hannibal. Not when he's already changed so much.
'But I came back for you, Will. I'm here now for you, just as I wanted it to be so long ago.' He really did look happy as he spoke, his face tender, rather than cruel as it so often could be. In a way, he seemed naive. Innocent. Though it would only damage Will if he kept in that mind-set.
'Alienated from Jack and Alana. Isolated, alone. Constantly fearing for my own sanity, having to check the World I see around me is my own. Both drowning and suffocating simultaneously. But I have you. This is your design, is it, Dr Lecter?' Will stood, trying to appear angry, trying to raise his voice, yet maintaining only a look of complete exhaustion. 'I need to go out.'
Hannibal couldn't keep a smile from his face though, even long after Will had left. He'd used the doctor's title. He'd listened to him. He hadn't rejected him. Progress.
